Midnight Honor

fresh air.
    Situated directly across the street from the Tolbooth was the largest inn in Inverness. It had been turned into the officers' mess, with the rooms on the second floor being assigned to senior officers and their staff. Since there were only four main streets in Inverness, all of them converging in the vicinity of the courthouse, the immediate area in front of both buildings was crowded with soldiers, all of whom stoppedwhat they were doing to stare at the elegantly caped and hooded woman who was helped down off her horse and led into the Tolbooth.
    Before she went inside, Anne turned and glared back at the curious redcoats. She made it easier for them by lowering her hood; when she turned her face briefly up to the warm sunlight, she heard the low rush of whispers identifying her as “
la belle rebelle,”
and the equally vehement hissings that said it could not possibly be so.
    “If you please, my lady.” Lieutenant Cockayne stretched a hand toward the open door. He removed his lace-trimmed cocked hat and waited for her to pass through before instructing that no one else should be admitted.
    It took a moment for Anne's eyes to adjust to the dimmer light inside the courthouse. There were only two windows, and they were shuttered from the inside to discourage noses from being pressed against the glass. There were tall, multi-tined candelabra set at intervals along the walls instead, lending the room the gloomy atmosphere of an inquisition chamber. A single chair had been placed about five feet in front of the trestle table, behind which sat ten bewigged, uniformed officers, all of whom had been conversing, sitting in various stages of lazy repose until Anne came into the room.
    Their conversations ceased at once. One false bark of laughter lingered the longest and drew Anne's attention to the cruel, hawklike features of General Henry Hawley, seated at the far right end.
    There was no mistaking Hawley from the descriptions she had overheard, but the rest, save one, were unfamiliar. The Earl of Loudoun's rounded, split-veined jowls quivered as he straightened and busied himself arranging a few documents that were before him, and although she stared at him for several long moments, he did not look up again.
    The one face she had hoped—and dreaded—to see was that of her husband, but Angus was not there. She had not heard any word from him but she had managed to convince herself that no news was good news. He was an officer, a laird, a chief; his death would have been reported. Moreover, she suspected her arrest would have been much less civil had there been no fear of repercussions from the local governmentofficials, the most important of whom was the Lord President, Duncan Forbes—the man who supposedly had given her his personal warrant of immunity.
    “And so she comes before us,” said a quiet voice from the back of the room. “The red-haired rebel hellion.”
    Anne kept her eyes forward. Solid, decisively placed bootsteps brought the speaker slowly forward out of the shadows where he had been concealed, the sound echoing in the empty room, shivering off the walls as it was likely orchestrated to do.
    “Your reputation precedes you, Lady Anne,” the voice said. “Or would you prefer to be addressed by this tribunal as ‘Colonel Anne’?”
    Now Anne turned, but she did so keeping her gaze deliberately level. The fact that the Duke of Cumberland was a full head shorter than she required an immediate—and obvious— adjustment, one that was supplemented with a slight arching of her brows.
    “Since I wear neither the uniform nor the rank for which you credit me, sir, you may address me as Lady MacKintosh.”
    “And you may bend your knee and address me as Your Grace,” he replied evenly.
    “Ahh. Please do forgive my ignorance, Your Grace,” she countered, dipping down in a perfectly elegant, graceful curtsy. “The light is so poor, and with no formal introduction, I was not aware to whom I was speaking.”
    He continued to walk around her, cutting a wide, deliberate circle that took him in and out of shadow, seemingly content to observe and prolong the tension—something Hawley apparently could not abide.
    “You have been brought before us today, madam, to answer charges of sedition and treason,” he said, “and to account for your actions of the past five months.”
    “Would that accounting be by the day, sir, or by the week?”
    “By the deed, madam. Do you deny, for instance, that